I only discovered a few days ago that Pruitt-Igoe and the World Trade Center were both designed by the same architect, Minoru Yamasaki. (Bad luck about the portfolio, old chap!)
There's another, social instance of "the same architect" syndrome at work here, though and that's the instance I want to worry. Pruitt-Igoe was a prime example of the contradictions and inconsistencies inherent in what started during the New Deal as "slum clearance" and became euphemised after World War II as "urban renewal".
Ostensibly public housing had the benevolent purpose that its name proclaims. But in its implementation, urban renewal was typically about real estate speculation and pork barrel politics. I don't have the sources handy but I seem to recall reading that more units of housing -- substandard, of course -- were removed by urban renewal than were ever built by public housing.
The neo-liberal frenzy of the past twenty years was not so much a departure from the old publicly-funded cronyism as it was its intensification, along with a cynical disavowal of the discredited rhetoric of public benevolence and its replacement with a rhetoric of free markets and consumer choice.
Pruitt-Igoe and the World Trade Center -- the superstructural 'skins' were different but the political economic mix was similar: public risk, private gain and a disingenuous rhetoric that confounded the two.
The post Sept. 11 corporate line-up for bailouts was a peek behind the curtain at the real dependence of neo-liberal "private free enterprise" on state subvention. Like Humpty-dumpty after the fall, the first instinct of the bourgeoisie was to call for the king, his horses and his men. The question is, can they put him back together again?
The war against terrorism is a side-show (although I'm sure it is not consciously intended as such). The terrorist attack was a side-show. The main event may best be framed by the question "how did those towers get there in the first place?"
Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213